MN.20.04.1995. Receiver Survey & Web Launch

This edition marked the start of Radio Netherlands presence on the World-Wide Web (21st April 1995) after three years of experimenting with MCI-Mail and participation in bulletin board systems like FIDONET. As Director of Programmes at the time, I remember suggesting www.rnw.nl as the URL to the head of IT at the time. We chat with Esmail Amid-Hozour, head of Grundig North America. I think you would be hard put to find someone who has more enthusiasm for AM broadcasting, and shortwave in particular. He was very clever in putting shortwave portables in airline catalogues and Sharper Image. There’s also a visit to the BBC World Service shop in Bush House (long since gone) and a report on Lowe receivers designed and made in Matlock, Derbyshire. Still love those long URLs. I suppose we really covered the birth of Adam Curry’s love affair with the web, well before podcasting. Then it was called metaverse.com and you could download software to listen to radio stations, like a station in Melbourne, Florida. These days Adam’s devoted himself to producing www.noagendashow.com with John C Dvorak. Haven’t time’s changed? We also celebrated the 10th anniversary of NDXE, the station that had a listeners club but never built the transmitter. This was a global radio station that claimed it would broadcast on shortwave in stereo.